Hotel

On 31 March, 2020, mobile app users will have the ability to shop and book content from Direct Connect content providers.

This will allow Hotel Direct Connect content to be available to users through Hotel Service V2 on the SAP Concur mobile app, raising customer and user satisfaction, especially in markets with heavy reliance on Hotel Direct Connect content (EMEA, APAC).

Additionally, TMC partners gain competitive advantage by making their new TMC hotel content available in the SAP Concur mobile app, reducing TMC fees for those customers by lowering the number of GDS-related hotel bookings.

Train

SAP Concur has upgraded its connectivity to the SNCF rail provider, by connecting to their new API, PAO (Portail d’Acces aux Offres).

This connection will allow us to offer our customers the Regional Travel (TER) content, as well as the continued support of Eurostar, through its migration from SNCF Riva to SNCF PAO, targeted for 16 March, 2020.

Miscellaneous

SAP Concur will soon begin the deprecation process of removing Hash-Based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) as an SSO option. The replacement service for HMAC is SAML SSO, a self-service method of setup whereby client admins have access within SAP Concur to complete their SAML connections.

Clients currently using HMAC are encouraged to migrate to the SSO self-service tool as soon as it is released (targeted for Q2 2020). The new SSO self-service tool allows multiple portals (Identity Providers) to be added.

This Release Note is intended for the technical staff responsible for file transmissions with SAP Concur. For our customers and suppliers participating in data exchange through various secure file transfer protocols, SAP Concur has made changes that provide greater security for those file transfers.

As of 2 PM PST on 24 February, 2020, connections via the HTTPS protocol are no longer allowed when connecting to the SAP Concur file transfer system.

These changes provide greater security for file transfers.

Targeted for late March, when a user signs into SAP Concur, if some products or services are unavailable while other products and services are available, a modified version of the user’s Home page appears, providing access to the products and services that are available.

Prior to implementing this improvement, if a user attempted to sign in to SAP Concur when one or more products or services was not available, a 503 (service unavailable) message appeared, the user’s Home page could not be accessed, and the user had to wait until all services and products were available before signing in to SAP Concur.

This enhancement enables users to complete tasks that rely on the products and services that are available even when other products and services might be unavailable.

This Release Note is intended for the technical staff responsible for file transmissions with SAP Concur. For our customers and suppliers participating in data exchange, SAP Concur is maintaining our file transfer subsystem to provide greater security for those file transfers.

SAP Concur will begin migrating entities that currently use a legacy process for moving files to a more efficient and secure file routing process that relies on APIs.

These changes provide greater security and efficiency for file transfers.

SAP Concur is announcing an end-of-support cycle for version 1.1 of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption protocol, while continuing support for the more secure version 1.2 of TLS. As background, the TLS protocol allows secure back and forth communications between a phone or computer and a cloud-based service.

Refusal of TLS v.1.1 connections has commenced as of 20 February, 2020.

SAP Concur is taking this step after careful consideration of our customers’ security and ease of upgrade to the newer, more secure version 1.2 of TLS. This end-of-support plan for TLS v 1.1 ensures our clients are communicating with SAP Concur solutions in a safer and more secure manner using TLS v 1.2.

Travel Operations / Technical Essentials

Historically, SAP Concur has offered post-ticket change capabilities for Sabre (via Sabre Automated Exchanges), Worldspan (via Rapid Reprice) and Apollo (via Worldspan cross-GDS Rapid Reprice).

With the March 2020 release, SAP Concur is pleased to announce support for exchange capabilities for Amadeus via Amadeus Ticket Changer (ATC) for Professional edition. ATC will be made available for Standard edition with the April 2020 release.

Amadeus customers will be able to make changes to their ticketed reservations online, eliminating the need to call their agency.

To retire legacy connectivity with Travelport, Concur Travel is migrating from the XML Select connectivity platform to the Galileo Web Services connectivity platform. This change benefits SAP Concur customers as follows:

• Allows better scalability and stability of Concur Travel’s Apollo/Galileo services

• Enables SAP Concur to remove legacy code used for connectivity to Apollo/Galileo, which simplifies internal operations

• May improve performance, since a more simplified connectivity approach will be used

• May improve stability

Travel Operations / Technical Essentials

In 2017, SAP Concur announced limited support for branded fares for all Apollo, Galileo and Worldspan customers.

SAP Concur has been in development, in partnership with Travelport, to deliver true branded fares support for all Travelport customers. Specifically, this development changes the way Concur Travel stores fares in GDS PNRs; fare stores will include brand modifier(s) for branded fare airlines. This new fare store functionality was made available via pilot starting the evening of 24 February.

Historically, SAP Concur has offered post-ticket change capabilities for Sabre (via Sabre Automated Exchanges), Worldspan (via Rapid Reprice) and Apollo (via Worldspan cross-GDS Rapid Reprice).

With a future release, Concur Travel will also support exchange capabilities for Amadeus via Amadeus Ticket Changer (ATC). More details about this feature will be provided as soon as they are available.

Amadeus customers will be able to make changes to their ticketed reservations online, eliminating the need to call their agency.

The Profile User permission is used in Concur Travel for two purposes. First, in a setup using only Concur Travel, Concur Travel integrated with Concur Expense or Concur Travel integrated with Concur Request and a Book then Approve workflow, it allows customers to assign this permission to users that should not have access to the Travel Wizard to book travel (yet), but should already have access to all travel-related fields in their user profile to fill in (for example, preferences for seats and meals, frequent traveller numbers, etc.).

Also, this permission can be used with a setup where Concur Travel is integrated with Concur Request and an Approve then Book workflow. It can be used in this context to restrict user access to the Travel Wizard to book travel prior to receiving Request approval, while still enabling travel booking from an approved request.

To make a clear distinction between these two use cases, SAP Concur plans to introduce a new Approve then Book permission user that will enable travel booking from an approved request.

As part of its standardisation effort, SAP Concur will be updating the standard hotel passive format for all GDS.

Once SAP Concur has migrated all hotel partners to the new hotel platform (HS2), agency fulfilment partners can programme mid-office routines around one format for all non-GDS hotel content in Concur Travel.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is reminding travellers that beginning 1 October, 2020, every traveller must present a REAL ID-compliant driving licence, or another acceptable form of identification (such as passport), to fly within the United States.

The legacy Credit Card Feed is used by fewer than five Concur Travel clients to import credit card information. However, this method of transferring sensitive information does not reflect SAP Concur’s security best practices. Due to the small number of clients still using this feature, and given that there are more secure alternatives, we are deprecating the Credit Card Feed. Targeted for 1 July 2020, existing credit card feeds will no longer be operable.

Reducing the number of supported mechanisms for exchanging data allows SAP Concur to focus on providing better security and ease-of-use for our clients.

The legacy HR Feed Editor is an outdated method for importing user information into Concur Travel and is used by less than five Travel-only clients. Due to the very small number of clients still using this feature, and given that there are superior alternatives, we are deprecating the HR Feed Editor. Targeted for 1 July 2020, feeds coming via the HR Feed Editor will no longer be operable. If you think you will be affected, please contact SAP Concur support or your TMC to identify a solution that’s best for you.

Reducing the number of supported mechanisms for exchanging data allows SAP Concur to focus on providing better security and ease-of-use for our clients.

The Legacy Travel Assistant Feed is an outdated method for importing user information into Concur Travel and is used by fewer than five Travel-only clients. Due to the very small number of clients still using this feature, we are deprecating the Travel Assistant Feed. Targeted for 1 July, 2020, data coming via the Travel Assistant Feed will not be imported. If you think you are affected, please work with Support or your TMC to identify a solution that is best for you.

Reducing the number of supported mechanisms for exchanging data allows SAP Concur to provide better security and improve ease-of-use for our customers.

Sabre has introduced a new Sabre Hotel Lodging platform, which works with orchestrated services, together commonly referred to as Content Services for Lodging (CSL). All customers using the current hotel services are required to migrate to the new CSL, targeted for Spring 2020.

While Concur Travel will utilise the new CSL services, we will not create hotel segments in the CSL format. Concur Travel will create all hotel bookings in the same format as is currently used by the hotel APIs (in the legacy format). Concur Travel will make all attempts to maintain the same number of scans, but the introduction of a new price validation step in the process does present the possibility of at least one additional scan per shopping/pricing event.

Users should not see any changes to their current booking flow, but additional data elements may be presented or used to improve the overall booking experience or breadth of hotel options.

SAP Concur changes the queuing logic for user-abandoned or orphaned PNRs containing passive segments for reservations through the Cleartrip API. Going forward, such PNRs will be put in the refund request queue.

Bringing awareness to TMCs of bookings that require manual intervention by placing them in the refund request queue helps them to follow up with travellers on unfinished bookings. TMCs can work with them to determine whether the booking should be cancelled and refunded (if possible) or finished manually to enable processing by mid-office routines.

It also better supports TMCs in their efforts to reconcile Cleartrip charges against their account with invoices to their customer.

Over many years, SAP Concur has supported several options around fare storing for Worldspan. This has presented a high level of complexity for Worldspan PNR support. Recently, SAP Concur has seen that some of the legacy options are not well suited to work with newer industry faring, such as the Exclude Unbundled Economy Fares option (FXD modifier).

To reduce support costs and to ensure SAP Concur is using the most up-to-date pricing methods for our Worldspan customers, SAP Concur has made several changes. Due to other higher priority initiatives, the remaining settings will not be updated until further notice.